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POLITICO 44

A robust technology research bill cleared the House in late May. An industry tax credit won the lower chamber’s approval just days later. But both proposals still remain mired in partisan squabbling in the Senate — leaving the tech community worried that the upper chamber is now the place their prized proposals go to die.

Dominating the Senate’s agenda for months have been big-ticket items like health care and financial regulatory reform, and still looming on the docket are bills that tackle energy and perhaps immigration. While tech insiders accept that those issues are bound to take floor precedence, many are nonetheless frustrated that the most apolitical, bipartisan and popular tech bills have crashed headfirst into the chamber’s politics.

The Information Technology Industry Council — whose membership includes the likes of Apple, Cisco and Skype — has not alerted its members to a “key vote” in the Senate since February 2009. The last time the chamber passed legislation even remotely pertaining to the tech community was Democrats’ $787 billion stimulus package, which included federal dollars to expand broadband, according to Ralph Hellmann, ITI’s senior vice president of government relations.

“The Senate has become the graveyard for good tech legislation,” he told POLITICO this week. Hellmann later clarified that the delays are not the result of any calculated Senate effort to “decry the tech community” but epitomize “the nature of the beast” that is the upper chamber.

Of course, it was that very beast last week that voted to kill Democrats’ tax extenders bill — and with it, a research and development tax credit widely supported by the industry.

Top tech businesses maintain that the credit is essential if they are to continue expanding and hiring, especially in an economic climate that still is somewhat unfriendly to new investment. But Republicans nonetheless orchestrated its defeat, charging that the entire tax extenders package would have only inflated the federal deficit.

Democrats insisted the costs of the credit — not to mention most of their extenders bill — had been sufficiently offset. An aide to the Senate Finance Committee told POLITICO that Democrats have not given up hope, but the R&D credit’s chances still seem dismal.

“Convincing someone to spend money, often without a pay-for, is difficult,” said Morgan Reed, executive director of the Association of Competitive Technology, a group that represents information technology businesses.

“When you dig through and look at the R&D tax credit, … it actually creates jobs. But without a pay-for, it’s going to be hard to pass,” he told POLITICO.

At the same time, the America Competes Act — which would provide billions for science and technology research — has not even emerged from the Senate Commerce Committee. The full House, however, powered through two failed votes to pass it on a third try in late May.

Readers' Comments (5)

Only Liberal Democrats would pass up an opportunity to have a tax credit for R&D that really creates high-paying new jobs because they can't find an offsetting cut in some pet program such as Housing and Urban Development (HUD), or the 50% increase in foreign aid spending since Obama took office, or carving some from unspent and ineffective Stimulus budgets. Maybe its because cutting taxes is not their cup of tea, only spending and more spending. Ask yourself, America, are they really fit to lead our country? Are we really better off under Obama, Pelosi and Reid? Be honest. And vote come November.

Don't make me laugh. Tech bills from a bunch of Luddites who are still fascinated by Twitter and Blackberries. Too many doctors and lawyers in Congress - there's your problem.

I must agree! The Senate has become the graveyard of just about anything. At best, a bill emerges from the Senate so gutted as to render it meaningless or so filled with loopholes and pork to make it a candidate for legislative bureaucracy and judicial review, ad infinitum.

Yes, the Senate is filled with far too many Luddites, physicians, and lawyers who are past Social Security retirement age. These "Wise Fathers" (more appropriately might be called "Wise Great-Grandfathers") have left education and knowledge of the technological world out here somewhere in their musty and unused brain cells.

Too bad. As other countries leapfrog us in technology, these old coots sit back and reminisce on the porch, thinking of the old days. We are being left in the dust technologically because of these people. We are losing the lead in most areas of technology to the Chinese and other Asian countries, Europe is becoming the main supplier for out so-called "Alternate Energy Sources".

Is Steve Jobs being a big cry baby some more? How about that new iPhone that doesn't work or the iPad that won't play much of the web? What is the best thing you can do? Forget legislation, dump Apple while you can.

There are those who believe that Adobe’s Flash format is being handed its hat, especially since Steve Jobs has banished it from the iPhone and iPad platform. But according to YouTube, HTML5 is not yet ready to meet all of its needs.

John Harding, software engineer at YouTube, highlights six areas where HTML5 is lacking compared to Flash. There are:

Standard Video Format - Not all browsers support H.264 because of licensing concerns, holding back HTML5.

Robust video streaming - There’s more to video that just pointing to a file. People want control to be able to stream live video or go to a particular spot in a video.

Content Protection - DRM! No matter how you feel about it, some content providers love it.

Encapsulation + Embedding - There’s a lot more to a YouTube videos than the video. There’s stuff such as captions, annotations, and advertising.

Fullscreen Video - Still a pain for HTML5 to handle fullscreen video.

Camera and Microphone access - Some folks record their YouTube videos using YouTube, something that’s not possible with HTML5.

Bottom line is that YouTube is, for now at least, dependant on the Adobe Flash platform for some elements of its business. This means that Flash isn’t going to go away overnight, no matter how much Steve Jobs wants that to happen.Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.